Faceoff!

I deleted my Facebook account a week back. Ok, that’s a lie. I only ‘de-activated’ it, I didn’t delete it. I promised Facebook that “This is temporary. I’d be back”, before I hit ‘Confirm’. Plenty of people asked me why I did it.

-  “What ARE you saying!? Why?” I’m saying I deleted my FB account. Why not?
-  The plain old “Whaaaat!?”. What whaaaat?
-  A more concerned “What happened? All OK?” Nothing, why do you ask? All OK.
-  And a shock-inducing “why on earth did u delete ur FB account????….did u delete it or jus deactivated it ???.. seriously??? ..y did u delete it??…anybody offended u or something??…” Why on earth do you use so many punctuation marks?????!!!!!!
-  Someone also gave me the “:-o”, and did not even wait to see my own “:-o” in response.

I deleted Orkut one fine morning, and did not miss it at all! No one questioned me, no one even realized. I guess ALL of them were too busy on Facebook to notice. However, in this case, I did absentmindedly type “faceb” on a new tab right after opening Gmail a couple of times, each time going ‘Oooops’ before I closed the said tab. Well, it had become a habit, I suppose. Open Mozilla, type in gmail.com, open new tab, type in facebook.com, open new tab…

Anyway, nothing happened. I only deactivated it. No one offended me. I just decided I should de-addict myself and stay away for a while. It was not adding ANY value whatsoever. The ones I was ‘really’ in touch with was available on Gtalk, all the time. I did not have to ‘connect with them’ on a public platform and have interesting conversations just anyone could ‘Like’, comment on or ‘Share’. And well, I began feeling a bit sick about telling the whole world what I “did” with whom during any part of the day or night.

Plus, a couple of things did make me feel ‘ugh’ in general.

- Random people sending me friend requests.

o Hey-I’m-your-friend’s-friend-and-i-love-the-comments-you-leave-on-his/her-pages-so-let’s-be-friends
o I-have-this-urge-to-send-friend-requests-to-any-profile-that-has-a-girl’s-name-and-picture
o I-just-sent-you-a-request-but-maybe-you-did-not-see-it-so-I’ll-leave-you-a-message-as-well-so you’ll-remember-to-accept

- Blatant ‘ownership’ drives for old jokes, not-so-famous sayings, philosophical thoughts and the like…

o Type it down in own words and pretend it is something the person just came up with while having pasta and kanjivellam
o Type in one of my own pjs and post it as a quote (!!) followed by a hyphen and that person’s name! (No, I did not feel flattered at all.)
o Basically, too much Ctrl C + Ctrl V without giving credits where they are due.

- People questioning me on why I took them off my friend list (the options I can offer are):

o We’re not really “friends”
o Because, after the first “Hi. Good to find you on FB…”, we’ve never commented on or ‘Share’d or ‘Like’d each other’s pics/updates,
or even had a chat ever
o Because I like figuring out who my ‘friends’ really are, and keeping just them
o You did not do anything to me (and I really don’t want you to, either)
o No, you didn’t hurt/offend me; if you did, I wouldn’t stop at just ‘unfriend’ing you

- General fatigue from all the fakeness overload.

o You don’t talk to me if we meet in person;
o You don’t ever make the mistake of getting in touch with me;
o You subtly say or do things to let me (or people you know will convey it to me) know that you really don’t like me.
o BUT you ‘Like’ my pics, updates, comments and even “wish there was a ‘Love’ option over ‘Like’. Phew.

- Updates that end up spamming my wall some of which could go like:

o “Having tea out on my balcony before I have a 45 minute bath, put on my Sunday best and head out for lunch at ___ restaurant with (spouse), meet X, Y and Z for tea and party till midnight at K’s place. Life is sooo good. What are you doing today?” Is “trying to unfriend you without you getting to know” a suitable response?
o Heavenly breakfast — with ABC DEF; Awesome lunch. Full tummy, empty wallet — with ABC DEF; Dinner couldn’t have been better — with ABC DEF; Off to bed – with ABC DEF (Will you update again in a couple of hours? Should I wait? )
o Must buy a new bulb for the kitchen (hmmm…how about one for the brain as well?); About to change the bulb in the kitchen (should I pray for you? or for the bulb, perhaps?); Changed the bulb in kitchen. (Hooray, big round of applause, people!)

- Having to worry about who all in the friend list will tell who all that is NOT in the list, about what I update about what, when, who, why—and then be held responsible for hurt feelings, broken hearts, blame games and the likes. (Dang. Where is the ‘delete account’ option?)

So why did I not just delete the account? Well, silly it will sound…but that’s for Pumbaa’s sake To keep all the awesome comments he got on his photo album in my account. I really did not want to delete them forever. What if, later in life, he asks me what people had to say about his days as a pup? So, till I’m back to FB-ing, I shall badmouth the various kinds of FB users and pretend to be the enlightened one who is above them all

P.S.: This whole post materialized after a conversation with a certain someone to whom I said — Hey, I deleted my FB account two days back…so would you be a darling and post this there, saying “Dedicated just for me, by Priya Nayar. She thinks too much of Spiderman love can do this to me verrrrry soon.”? ’

.

Now most of you know who fired multiple questions at me, with an overload of punctuation marks